Harriet Beecher Stowe was a woman ahead of her times. Best known as the author of the best-seller ¿Uncle Tom¿s Cabin,¿ Stowe wrote more than 30 books over 50 years while raising seven children and running a household. Stowe was born in 1811 in Litchfield, Conn., to a preacher who spoke out against the practice of slavery long before it was fashionable. Stowe's book ¿Uncle Tom¿s Cabin¿ is credited with popularizing the abolitionist cause against slavery and is said to have contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War between the Northern United State and south. Legend has it that when U.S. President Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1862 he said, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this Great War!" After Stowe¿s scholarly husband retired, the family moved to Hartford, where she built her dream house. n 1873, she moved to her last home, the brick Victorian Gothic cottage-style house on Forest Street, which is open as a museum. The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford, adjacent to the Mark Twain House and Museum, has three historic buildings on 2.5 acres.